Psychiatry Reconsidered From Medical Treatment to Supportive Understanding [Hardcover]

Psychiatry suffers a lot of criticism, not least from within its own scientifically founded medical world. This book provides an account of mental health difficulties and how they are generally addressed in conventional medical circles, alongside critical reviews of the assumptions underpinning them to encourage more humanitarian perspectives.Table of Contents Introduction 1. ICD Chapter V and DSM. Cataloguing Mental Illness 2. Misunderstandings of 'Diagnosis' 3. Psychopharmacology: The Medicines of Psychiatry 4. Psychopharmacology Reconsidered 5. 'Psychotherapy' 6. Public Service Psychiatry As It Really Is 7. All In The Mind 8. So What Can Be Learned? Endnote

This remarkably concise and erudite text will havevalue for experienced practitioners as well as those new to the field. Itprovides a broad and compelling critical analysis of psychiatry and relatedprofessions. (Sandra Steingard, metapsychology, Vol. 19 (51), December, 2015)

'This long-needed book explodes the myth that mental disorders are just 'diseases like any other.' It highlights the misunderstandings and disappointments this view has caused and carefully explores the nature of modern-day treatments from drugs to psychotherapy in order to identify the elements that truly help people. It deserves to be widely read by all those interested in making mental health care more effective, more transparent and more humane.' Joanna Moncrieff, University College London, UK

'This book is a very important and accessible report from the front line by an experienced psychiatrist with many years of general psychiatry under his belt. He has the very unusual advantage of simultaneously occupying an academic position in the sociology department of a Russell Group university, and hence bringing a fresh perspective to bear on the perennially troubled practice of doing psychiatry in the UK. This book provides a long hard look at psychiatry as medical practice diagnosis, medicatil“Ø